In order to test the newly produced cement, Zhao Hui and the old kiln owner used wooden planks to divide the patio into more than a dozen areas, and poured cement mortar with different water-cement ratios. Zhang Guanghua looked down, and sure enough, there were still a few thin wooden boards and a few shoe prints on the ground.

"Remember, water every half a day, and the ground will wait for another half a month to be completely dry, and then it will be smashed with stones, and it won't be broken." Afraid that something would go wrong in the back, Zhang Guanghua reminded Zhao Hui again.

"By the way, let's go to the shopkeeper Shen and find the machinery factory to customize a few stone crushers. Then, build a few more houses. ”

After coming to the Yuan Dynasty for so long, Zhang Guanghua has been living in a dark wooden house, feeling that he is about to live in mold. Hasn't Shen Li always been ready to buy a house from the Chamber of Commerce, in fact, it is better to build it directly than to buy it. In the new century, all the money was made by those real estates, and now in ancient times, I also want to engage in real estate!

Seeing that Shen Li was beside him, Zhang Guanghua immediately pulled him over.

"Hey, Lao Shen, I heard that the Chamber of Commerce has been restructured, who is the person in charge of the machinery factory, you call him over."

"Chen Zhiyi, come over here." As soon as Shen Li beckoned, he called a tall and thin man over, this person Zhang Guanghua had seen, he used to be Carpenter Liu's deputy, and he was also a carpenter, he had a good spatial imagination ability.

"Chen Zhiyi, right, has your machinery factory opened?" Zhang Guanghua was in a good mood and also made jokes about him.

"Yes, just now, Deng Yunfeng, the director of the steel mill, ordered ten converters for steelmaking from me." Chen Zhiyi replied without a smile, if he was equipped with a pair of gold-wire glasses, he would be a science and engineering professor at a university.

"Not bad! As soon as it opened, it was a good luck. I'll give you a second order, ten stone crushers, ten pulverizers! But these are all driven by windmills, you study it carefully, and I'll give you the drawings tomorrow. "Crushed stone doesn't need to be controlled at all times like steelmaking, so hydraulically driven is the best option right now.

After solving the problem of the cement factory, Zhang Guanghua began to discuss the business of the Chamber of Commerce with Shen Li.

"Can you really build a four- or five-story building?" Listening to Zhang Guanghua talk about the selection of the General Chamber of Commerce, Shen Li was very happy, but he still asked with a little skepticism.

Zhang Guanghua is so angry, he actually doubts my professional knowledge? In a fit of rage, he immediately used a steel-concrete structure at the Kametani site to create prefabricated panels, staircases, and load-bearing structures at a scale of 1:100. And taught Zhao Hui and the old kiln owner the practice of "cast-in-place", and only two hours later, a model of a two-story small western-style building was formed.

After instructing Shen Li to select a site for the headquarters as soon as possible, Zhang Guanghua went non-stop to inspect the cement production base. Although the development of cement could be left in the valley, the actual production site had to be chosen somewhere downstream of the river, to facilitate the construction of ditches, waterwheels, crushing and grinding.

After a hasty walk, Zhang Guanghua randomly chose a station, and what he didn't know was that his casual move today made a year later, the vicinity of the river was full of dense windmills, and it became a famous windmill hometown and gravel base, and countless stones would be transported by ship to grind into powder and transported back to all parts of the country by boat. Even after switching to electric machinery with crushed stone and milling, it continued to prosper for a long time.

In the following month, Zhao Hui and Zhao were busy day and night, which made the sales of "Conch brand" cement soar. A large part of the cement was sold to the county government to strengthen the city walls and build blockhouses. And the price is not high, after all, it is considered to support construction.

The other small part was allocated to Zhang Guanghua to build the headquarters of the chamber of commerce. In fact, this is also the first demonstration building built by Zhang Guanghua to open up the cement market.

Shopkeeper Shen set the site of the Chamber of Commerce in the original horse farm in the north of the city. Since the Mongolian merchants in the city were gone, because the Yuan Dynasty stipulated that the Han people could not raise horses, the horse farm was abandoned. Now it is time for Zhang Guanghua to use it to engage in urban construction, and there is no need to force demolition to develop the horse farm, and there is no need to be afraid of nail households.

Zhang Guanghua planned to build a small five-storey western-style building with three entrances and three retreats, but in fact the effective number of floors was only four, and the top half floor with a tiled roof was only suitable for stacking sundries.

After having experience in Turtle Valley, Zhang Guanghua knew that the most important thing in research and development was to keep it secret, so he planned to build a courtyard house with the building to fence off the racecourse. In order to save money, except for the main building, the other houses are made of ordinary one-story brick and timber structures, except for the four corners of the arrow tower. Later, Shen Li was worried that there was not enough space in the patio, so he added a row of houses, and finally besieged the pentagonal city.

Unexpectedly, Shen Li's unintentional move brought an unexpected nickname to the headquarters of the "Zhenhua Chamber of Commerce": Pentagon.

Under Zhang Guanghua's supervision, the new house was built with plaster ceilings, plaster walls, custom glass windows and ceramic floors. The only thing that displeased him was that there were two things, one was that the kitchen had to burn firewood, and there was no water, electricity, toilet and sewer.

There was also a small episode in the middle of the construction of the new house, when Zhang Guanghua entrusted Shen Li to find craftsmen to customize glass windows and ceramic floors, the clever Shen Li immediately saw a business opportunity, funded the merger of a porcelain factory and a glass factory, and purchased a patent from Zhang Guanghua. Because the ancients believed that transparent things would steal people's souls, glass products did not sell well, and basically only Buddhists used a little colored glass, and transparent glass was not marketable at all. This made Shen Li win a glass factory with poor condition at a very low price.

On the first day of the winter month of 1354, this is a day that affects the nerves of countless people, because this day is the day when the "Zhenhua General Chamber of Commerce" cuts the ribbon, and on this day, the people in power in the four counties of Anxi will come.

The ribbon-cutting ceremony invited four prominent figures from the county, and each of them was invited to the table without surprise. Regardless of who is currently in power, it is always good to have the opportunity to build a relationship with them.

The gongs and drums were noisy, the flags were flying, the guns were all famous, and the ribbon-cutting was successful.

"Wow! What a beautiful house! ”

"Daddy, Daddy! That house is so tall! ”

"What a white house! With snow-white walls, snow-white floors, and white windows, I'm not in a fairyland, am I? ”

Every guest invited to visit the headquarters of the Chamber of Commerce was shocked, and they all secretly decided in their hearts that they must build themselves such a house in the future, which is a fairy-like day.

The next day, to Zhang Guanghua's surprise, he received a large number of orders, but to his surprise, they didn't come to buy cement, but directly asked him to send someone to repair the house! There was no way, Zhang Guanghua, who was completely out of line, had to ask Shen Li to set up another engineering company, which solved these problems. And by the time they had done all this, the time had already entered late autumn.

Time went back two months, in September 1354, in the autumn, a major event also happened, and it was this incident that made Zhang Guanghua's Chamber of Commerce so glamorous in cutting the ribbon.

That is, to hold Congress.

"Do you think it's going to change now?"

"Shh......h Don't talk nonsense, be careful when the Yuan army comes back, and the first one will kill you. ”

"Did you receive the flyer? Han Lin'er in the north has become the emperor of Bozhou, changed the country name to the Great Song Dynasty, and the year name is Dragon and Phoenix. ”

"Could it be that the world has changed in this world, and it will be the world of my Han people in the future?"

"That's not necessarily, many places in the north have been captured by the Red Turban Army, I heard that the Red Turban Army is invulnerable, and you can take people's heads from a hundred meters away."

"Isn't that right? Look at the team of military divisions, as soon as the spear comes out, it turns into powder in an instant within a hundred meters. ”

"I heard from the grapevine that the military advisor wants to accept Han Lin'er's leadership, but Bozhou is far away from us, and he wants to be the emperor himself!"

"No, it won't! He is not the heir of the former Song Dynasty, how can the people agree. ”

“……”

In 1354, on the first day of the ninth month, the weather was fine, and it was appropriate to sacrifice, make alliances, pray for blessings, and avoid marriage, consecration, and travel.

The Anxi County Ya was newly decorated, and the two stone lions, tigers and tigers in front of the county Ya were vigorous, looking at the newly opened up square in front of them. Armed with new arquebuses, the soldiers of the musket squad patrolled back and forth around the square with their toes high.

In the center of the square, an open-air podium has been set up, and all corners of the stage and the stage have been decorated with red cloth. In the center, a banner was hung, "The First Congress of the Four Counties of Anxi Xianyou Dehua Yongchun", and there were two huge mahogany boxes under the stage, with three big characters "ballot box" written on it.

In front of the square, there are rows of neatly arranged tables and chairs, densely packed with hundreds of them, but a red cordon has been set up around the square, and outside are patrolling soldiers.

Uncle Pei is an honest farmer in Xiaoming Village, Daming Township, Dehua County, who was farming at home, but suddenly received a notice from the township that he was "elected" as one of the members of the National Assembly, and in order to be responsible for the 200 people in the surrounding villages, he needed to pay for his own expenses to go to Anxi County for two days.

"Oh my God! That's the county government! I usually have to take a detour. Uncle Pei's heart was trembling and full of worry, it was the busy farming season for the autumn harvest, and if he left, there would be no one to clean up the crops. His heart was full of anger towards the township chief, but he didn't dare to vent it at all, so he had to walk honestly for a day and attend the congress on time.

There are many similar situations, except for a small number of senators elected by existing officials, the other members of the House of Representatives are "elected" by Zhao Shan, the magistrate of the county, in various names.

(3014 words)

1. In the fifteenth year of Zhizheng (1355), Liu Futong supported Han Lin'er to be the emperor in Bozhou, changed the Yuan to Longfeng, and the country was called the Great Song Dynasty, and was known as the "King of Xiaoming" in history. For the sake of the plot, this article will be slightly advanced.